of the Reformist Party (9 deputies) and various Republican parties (20) and the Socialists (6) and the Lliga Regionalista (21) constituted a significant challenge to the establishment.
To the outrage of other members of the government and of Antonio Maura, La Cierva introduced by royal decree across-the-board pay rises for officers and promoted the ringleaders of the Juntas. Without consulting the Cortes, in a starving country he was massively inflating the military budget and undermining civilian sovereignty over the armed forces. His concern was to clinch military support for the monarchy. Constantly touring barracks, at the same time as he praised the patriotism of the Juntas, he banned the Non-Commissioned Officers’ Junta and eliminated the regenerationist elements led by Benito Márquez. When Márquez protested that the Minister’s pandering to the Juntas would eventually lead to the alienation of the army from the political system, La Cierva managed to get him expelled from the army. In February 1918, there began a strike of postal and telegraph workers. With characteristic heavy-handedness, La Cierva responded by militarizing those services and thereby rendering the strikers mutineers. Since the army lacked the expertise to run them, the consequence was total chaos in national communications. There was also public outrage that La Cierva had given in to the army but used force against civilians. La Cierva resigned and brought the government down. There were widespread rumours that he was planning to establish a dictatorship with a group of colonels. He later denied this.54
Alfonso XIII threatened to abdicate if a proper national government was not formed. The serious danger of a dictatorship under La Cierva was averted only when, on 21 March 1918, Maura was persuaded, in large part by Cambó, to preside over a broad national coalition government containing the principal party leaders. Dato, resentful because of the return of Maura, became Foreign Minister, García Prieto Minister of the Interior, Romanones Minister of Justice, Cambó Minister of Public Works and Santiago Alba Minister of Education. The public reaction was ecstatic, as if Spain had been saved and a new era inaugurated. Maura on the other hand was bitterly pessimistic. He wrote to his son: ‘They kept me tied up there for nearly ten years which could have been the most profitable of my life, stopping me from doing anything useful, and now they want me to preside over all of them. Let’s see how long this nonsense lasts.’55
Cambó defended his participation in the government in the Cortes on 17 April by claiming that it was necessary to avert anarchy.56 Alarmed by the sight of revolutionary workers in the streets, the industrialists dropped their own demands for political reform and, lured by Maura’s promises of economic modernization, permitted their leaders to support his administration. Yet again the industrial bourgeoisie had abandoned its political aspirations and allied with the landed oligarchy out of a fear of revolution. The coalition symbolized the slightly improved position of industrialists in a reactionary alliance still dominated by the landed interest.
In the event, despite apparently being a team of all the talents and making a highly promising and conciliatory start, the coalition was short-lived. With La Cierva absent, the strike of the communications workers was swiftly resolved. His military reform bill was revised and amnesty was granted for the events of August 1917. Nevertheless, there was considerable distrust within the government, especially between Dato and Maura and, most damagingly, between Alba and Cambó, who was trying both to further Catalan autonomy and to revitalize the Spanish economy. A crisis was provoked by the intensification of German attacks on Spanish shipping. The government issued an ultimatum to Berlin, but internal divisions were exacerbated by the Germanophile King’s refusal to permit further action. In addition, the growing hostility between Alba and Cambó saw Maura’s government collapse on 6 November 1918, five days before the armistice that brought the Great War to an end. Replaced by Romanones, an embittered Maura seemed to have reached the conclusion that the only solution was a military dictatorship. In fact, the fall of the second national government put an end to any remaining chance of effective reform of the system from above.57
Alfonso XIII with the coalition government formed by Antonio Maura on 21 March 1918 in response to his threat to abdicate.
5
A System in Disarray: Disorder and Repression, 1918–1921
The coming of peace in November 1918 brought an intensification of Spain’s political crisis. The huge profits made in mines, steel production and textiles had not, in the main, been invested in new technology. Indeed, widespread publicity given to spending by the nouveaux riches on luxury items, at a time of food shortages, had intensified working-class resentment of what was seen as a parasitic plutocracy. The return to peacetime production of British, French and American industry plunged the Spanish economy into crisis.1 Thus, while military brutality had permitted the discredited political system to survive the crisis of 1917, mass hunger and unemployment after the end of the war would intensify the pressure on the establishment. Already in 1918, there were strikes, bread riots and looting of shops. Nevertheless, the repression of the August 1917 strike had damaged the relationship between the Socialists and the anarchists and also divided both movements internally. The PSOE, too traumatized by the events of August 1917 to pursue further revolutionary action with the CNT, sought, instead, an electoral strategy in collaboration with the Republicans. This provoked a reaction from more militant elements that would eventually secede to form the Communist Party. While the Socialist leaders were worried by the success of the Bolsheviks in Russia, hard-line anarchists were thrilled. Oblivious to the authoritarian elements of Leninism, they believed that the events in Russia heralded the coming of a worldwide anarchist utopia. However, the more thoughtful syndicalists like Ángel Pestaña and Salvador Seguí would have been prepared to countenance joint strike action with the UGT.2
In the immediate aftermath of 1917, while UGT membership stagnated, the CNT grew substantially. One reason for this was the greater militancy of the anarcho-syndicalists. This had hitherto been rendered ineffective because the Catalan working class was dispersed into myriad small federations across individual trades and neighbourhoods. In 1917, there were 475 federations in Barcelona alone. The difficulty of arranging collective action played into the hands of the employers. The situation changed when the congress of the Catalan CNT, the Confederació Regional del Treball, held at Sants from 28 June to 1 July 1918, adopted a much more effective strategy. This was the creation of the so-called Sindicatos Únicos (united unions), in order to gather all the workers in each industry into a single body. It was further decided that all the Sindicatos Únicos in a given area would be grouped together in a local federation. Moreover, to prevent the growth of bureaucracy, union dues were abolished and paid administrative posts reduced to a bare minimum. With the help of some violent coercion of reluctant workers, the 475 small, weak unions in Barcelona were reduced to thirteen powerful ones. Henceforth, there would be fewer but much longer strikes, many of them initially successful. The Sindicato Único provided a channel for the resentments of the thousands of immigrant labourers who had arrived during the war years and were crammed into unhygienic tenements and paid starvation wages. The new union structure effectively imposed the militancy of the majority of these unskilled workers on the labour aristocracy and ensured that trade disputes quickly escalated. The brainchild of Seguí and Pestaña, the Sindicatos Únicos were adopted by the CNT nationally. By the end of 1918, the CNT had 70,000 members in Catalonia and 114,000 nationally. Within a year, this had swelled to 800,000.3
However, helped by the divisions within the working class and reinforced by the collaboration of the Lliga, the turno system was not quite dead yet. After the fall of the second national government, Alfonso XIII appointed a Liberal government under Manuel García Prieto, the Marqués de Alhucemas. It would be merely the first of ten brief administrations between November 1918 and September 1923, some of which would last for only a matter of weeks. La Cierva’s presence was divisive but necessary to keep the army in check, albeit at a high price. By accepting the Juntas as an army trade union, La Cierva was effectively tolerating indiscipline and demands which were a step towards military dictatorship. Riddled with factionalism, incapable of agreeing on a common agenda, one government after another failed to resolve ever-intensifying